Monday, February 7, 2011

Sam Lurcher

Before continuing with the adventures of the SLOWAT Co. I feel compelled to mention some of the idiosyncrasies of our hero, Sam Lurcher. First he is a recluse and on the surface seems to care about no one but himself but time and experience claims otherwise. Visiting his garage next door I would always give him a. "Hello there!" and it was after a year that he acknowledged it with a, "Humph" or something that sounded like that and then asked me, "Why do you wear different colored socks?" Rather than explaining I said, "Just to be different. Who likes to be like everyone else?" A week or so later I thought Sam had a grease smudge by his nose and mentioned it to him. He responded with,"Mustache." I let that subject drop until a week later the smudge grew more obvious so I asked him and he replied with only, "Mustache." My curiosity grew and I mentioned it seemed strange that the mustache was on one side only. He shot back to me, "Who likes to be like everyone else?" It was soon after I noticed he had different colored socks on. I have to wonder if, to be different people will one day have to wear the same colored socks? He seemed to me to being sarcastic about my socks and when he finally painted his car as he had claimed he would do, "one day" he painted it half white and half the original black. Sam was always busy doing strange things such as one day he drove in with two 500 gallon galvanized tanks he set on end in the back of the garage. Another time he set up a windmill like device on his garage roof that twirled with the wind a lot of the time. Another day he arrived with a strange garden tractor and unloaded it inside the garage. It was from the time General Electric made all electric garden tractors. I had to have an explanation and all he would say was to conserve energy. I found the answer just by watching Sam work. The wind device was to operate a small air compressor pump to compress air in the 500 gallon tanks. Whenever the breezes blew and that was often all night there was air being compressed. He used the compressed air to run a small electric generator that charged the batteries in the old G.E. electric tractor as well as using compressed air to operate an air wrench to take the lugs off the oval tires I used to give occupants of a vehicle with the tires the sensation of running without the exercise of actually running. Like they say, one thing leads to another and that's where we will go to tell about the research with the oval tires and the new company.